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Elizabeth Warren Says Apple, Amazon and Google Are Trying To 'Lock Out' Competition (recode.net)

Elizabeth Warren, an American academic and member of the Democratic Party, believes that Google, Apple, and Amazon are trying to use their size to "snuff out competition." In a speech about the perils of "consolidation and concentration" throughout the economy, the Massachusetts senator singled out the three of tech's biggest players. From a report:Warren had different beefs with Google, Apple and Amazon, but the common thread was that she accused each one of using its powerful platform to "lock out smaller guys and newer guys," including some that compete with Google, Apple and Amazon. Google, she said, uses "its dominant search engine to harm rivals of its Google Plus user review feature;" Apple "has placed conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services" that compete with Apple Music; and Amazon "uses its position as the dominant bookseller to steer consumers to books published by Amazon to the detriment of other publishers.""Google, Apple and Amazon have created disruptive technologies that changed the world, and ... they deserve to be highly profitable and successful," Warren said. "But the opportunity to compete must remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors that want their chance to change the world again."

22 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Business 101 by Berkyjay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    She also seems to understand the role that government should play in combating that first rule.

  2. Academic and member of the Democratic Party? by SpankiMonki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does whoever wrote the summary know that Elizabeth Warren's day job is as a sitting United States Senator? Apparently not.

    1. Re:Academic and member of the Democratic Party? by _xeno_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are those numbers from before or after she backed Hillary? Because based on my Facebook feed, she's pissed off a ton her supporters by pulling that non-sequitur.

      By tying herself to the Clinton ticket, she's effectively tied her political career to Clinton. If Clinton fails to win the election, Warren's political career is over. Keep in mind her next election is a mid-term election - which means that a good chunk of her supporters simply won't show up to vote.

      Not to mention that if there's one thing the Massachusetts electorate has shown, it's that they hate being taken for granted and will happily elect a moderate Republican if they think that the Democratic candidate is ignoring them.

      Of course, if she ends up the VP candidate for Clinton, all of this is moot and her future Senate career would be over regardless.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  3. Re:Well yeah by bravecanadian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pulling up the ladder behind you is a STAPLE of the current tech company leadership.

    Not just tech company leadership.

    A *lot* of people have had a good long drink of the greed is good/reagonomics/greenspan business philosophy koolaid.

    No amount of failure seems to convince them of the problems with it.

  4. Re:she's a hypocrit by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so her posturing against companies that use government to shut the door behind them to keep competition out are a bit disingenuous

    No, it is not. The only way a monopoly can exist is through government protection. Her "posturing" is spot on.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  5. Re:Business 101 by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    She also seems to understand the role that government should play in combating that first rule.

    Perhaps she might also lecture her colleagues regarding what they should be focussing on - stuff like this - instead of them devoting their energies towards hobbling encryption and trying to remove their citizen's constitutional rights.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  6. Re:Well yeah by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pulling up the ladder behind you is a STAPLE of the current tech company leadership.

    I think you meant, "Pulling up the ladder behind you is a STAPLE of every company and government in the history of the universe."

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  7. Re:Business 101 by chispito · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm glad to see she understands the first rule of business.

    Honestly, I don't know what you are getting at. Is it, "Make money?" Or perhaps "Grow your business?" Maybe you mean "Don't talk about Fight Club."

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  8. Re:Business 101 by Zantac69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    She also seems to understand the role that government should play in combating that first rule.

    :head scratch: So Amazon, Apple, and Google should encourage their competition?

    You mean like how the two major political parties have rigged the board so as to discourage political parties outside of the two majors?

    --
    1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
  9. Re:I don't believe that to be true!! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Informative

    As a great teacher once said, "Go educate thyself!"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Academic

  10. Re:I don't believe that to be true!! by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Who is world would call Elizabeth warren an academic?

    Apparently, the University of Texas, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard as she taught at each of their Law Schools. From Wikipedia:

    Warren was formerly a professor of law, and taught at the University of Texas School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and most recently at Harvard Law School. A prominent scholar specializing in bankruptcy law, Warren was among the most cited in the field of commercial law before starting her political career.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  11. Re:she's a hypocrit by chispito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only way a monopoly can exist is through government protection.

    You have it exactly backwards. The only way competition exists in certain (most?) sectors is due to government protection.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  12. Using Google Plus to dominate?? by gachunt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Her argument really fell apart for me at that point.

  13. Re: she's a hypocrit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that a collective (like a society) is more than just a bunch of people crammed together.

    It is a bunch of people who have to cooperate with each other. Cooperation requires limiting selfish indulgences, and defining where one person's rights end, and another's begins. Eg, if I am a home owner who is a lazy slob who harbors trash, my freedom to be a willful slob creates a haven for vermin that accosted my neighbors, bease the vermin don't stay put. To satisfy the neighbor's rights to keep their homes free of vermin, my right to be a slob has to be infringed.

    We do not live in a universe where ideal fantasies about personal liberty can be realistically entertained.

    That is what people try to tell you. You are the one not understanding.

  14. Watch out. The DNC needs that money. by slapout · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google and Apple are big supporters of liberal causes. Someone better get Warren back on the reservation.

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
  15. Well by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's always nice to see the American Indian perspective on these things.

  16. Re:Just like the DNC an GOP by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do you think they even realize the deep hypocritical irony?

    Although HRC and others have accepted millions in "speaking fees" from Wall Street and big pharma, Elizabeth Warren has not. She is not being hypocritical, since she has also spoken out about the influence of big money on politics.

  17. Re:she's a hypocrit by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> The only way competition exists in certain (most?) sectors is due to government protection.
    >
    > That's a baldfaced lie.

    This is why the Sherman anti-trust act exists. Monopolies are very easy to create in an unregulated economy. Even Smith acknowledged this fact.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  18. Re:I don't believe that to be true!! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This fallacy rich quote proves that.

    What fallacy exactly? Businesses — or individuals — don't exist separately from society and government. We're all in this together as a country for the last 240 years.

  19. Re:Just like the DNC an GOP by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    She is not being hypocritical, since she has also spoken out about the influence of big money on politics.

    And then she gets on the stage with the biggest Big Money candidate there is, and shouts, "I'm with her!"

    I'm fine with people donating to campaigns. I'm not fine with blatant hypocrisy.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  20. Re:Just like the DNC an GOP by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Both the DNC and the GOP are quite guilty of using their dominant positions in politics to keep other parties from gaining any kind of traction.

    That is an inherent characteristic of winner-take-all plurality voting. 2016 is a strange year to be complaining that the establishment locks out other voices. An insurgent won the nomination of one major party, and another insurgent came close in the other party.

  21. Re:she's a hypocrit by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Informative

    Monopolies are very easy to create in an unregulated economy.

    Nope. In an unregulated economy, the only way to make a monopoly is by offering your products or services at a better price than your competition. Rockefeller came close, and he did so by drastically reducing his costs *and* prices.

    Nope. The fastest and cheapest way to become a monopoly in an unregulated economy is to bring in the Pinkertons, establish a company town, and extract all of the profit for any and all economic activity for yourself. Rockefeller reduced his costs by murdering strikers using every armed force he could get his hands on, which was most of them. The tricks and techniques utilized by unregulated monopolies to extend and enhance their dominance are many and varied, and it is historical fact that a sufficiently advanced monopoly can and will arrogate the nominal government monopoly on force unto itself, either explicitly using some organization like the Pinkerton Agency or covertly, in the case of Rockefeller getting the Colorado National Guard called out for his benefit.

    Even Smith acknowledged this fact.

    Smith subscribed to a common misconception. That doesn't make him right.

    Adam Smith knew it was a fact because he had already seen it happen with the East India Company, which had operated as a monopoly in every market in which it did business and as de facto government of India for over 150 years at the time he wrote Wealth of Nations. He was not reciting some bullshit academic theory like the one you spout. The consequences of monopoly in an unregulated economy were the reality on the ground for his entire lifetime. Mr. Smith was busy writing his book as East India Company tea was being dumped into Boston harbor. Fortunately for him, he was living in Paris at the time, so his afternoon tea was not interrupted. Still, he knew exactly what an unregulated monopoly was capable of. The later activities of Carnegie and Rockefeller and other Gilded Age robber barons were a pale imitation of their predecessor.

    Reducing costs... Pfft. Where do you get this crap, The Toddler's Guide to the Republican Party Platform?